Yet another scam in centrally-funded education schemes has come to light in Raisen district where officials allegedly colluded with bank officials to siphon off money meant for primary education.

Raisen was one of the districts in Madhya Pradesh to have been covered in the first phase of District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) that was launched in 1994 to overhaul primary education in the country.

A more ambitious programme called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan replaced DPEP in 2001. At that time DPEP funds worth crores were lying unutilised. In Raisen, an amount of at least Rs 1.18 crore was never returned to the Bhopal-based State Education Centre, the state-level body that supervises education activities in all districts.

District Collector Sandeep Yadav told The Indian Express on Thursday that Assistant Project Coordinator (finance) N P Patel opened an account in his name in a cooperative bank and managed to deposit drafts worth Rs 1.18 crore received from block resource centres though they were not issued in his name.

The District Magistrate, the District Project Coordinator and the Chief Executive Officer of the district panchayat jointly hold the bank account and money can be withdrawn only with the signatures of at least two of them. In this case, Rs 63 lakh was withdrawn from the bank.

Yadav, who took the unprecedented decision of sealing the entire office of the District Project Coordinator, said the needle of suspicion pointed to Patel, who did not have any explanation for the missing funds nor could he produce any documents.

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